Programme helping over 11,000 farmers

THE commercialisation of rubber in North Fly, has supported over 11,000 farmers in Western, local MP James Donald says.
Donald said since 1994, farmers brought in rubber from all over the province for processing and packaged into PNG Classified Rubber Grade 10 for export.
In 2018, the North Fly development authority (NFDDA) entered into a five-year (2018-2022) price enhancement programme contract with North Fly Rubber Ltd (NFRL) to assist rubber farmers with an annual funding of K500,000 to implement the programme.
Donald said NFRL is owned by the 11,412 smallholders in the district and operates a rubber processing plant in Kiunga.
“NFDDA honoured the 2018 payment and another K500,000 was paid for 2019 while payment for 2020 and 2021 will be made available soon,” Donald said.
He said the funding was from the K1 million Coronavirus (Covid-19) agriculture stimulus package. He said the price incentive had a package to introduce bonus pay outs to farmers against their total annual production.